MOCCA Award + Partners in Art + Venice

Upon receiving their prize for, promoting and developing contemporary art projects in Canada and abroad over the last 10 years, Partners in Art (PIA) turned around and gifted the prize to the National Gallery of Canada in support of Shary Boyle's exhibition in the Canada Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, opening June 1.

As Yvonne Fleck commented at the reception “PIA has lots to celebrate during its tenth anniversary year and receiving and ‘re-gifting’ the MOCCA Award in Contemporary Art to Shary Boyle was especially important to the organization. As we look ahead to the next ten years, PIA plans to continue to build on its current work as well as undertake a greater role in advocacy, with a goal of influencing public policy around contemporary visual arts and supporting our cultural legacy both in Toronto and nationally.”

It's sure to be an exciting exhibition in Venice this year with Boyle creating a site-specific installation for the unique space. As James Adams recently wrote "Boyle will allow that devotees of her oeuvre, a blend of the peculiarly familiar and the anthropomorphically phantasmagoric, with folkloric-feminist/erotic-political resonances, will find it “absolutely recognizable” – but “pushed to a level I haven’t been able to do before.” At the same time, she promises “a real transformation” of and “holistic experiential dialogue with” the exhibition space, with “many, many components – yet all fitting in, like a Russian doll.” Music, too, as the installation’s title suggests, is another metaphor. “There are recurring notes, quiet parts, crescendos, little solos, choruses; it’s almost like a composition.”"

Here at the Drake we're hosting a fundraising event for Shary Boyle's exhibition. Join us on April 30 to celebrate her work and catch her fave band!